By David French / The New York Times
It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the Trump administration is spoiling for a fight on America’s streets. On Saturday, after a protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests degenerated into violence, the administration reacted as if the country were on the brink of war.
The violence was unacceptable. Civil disobedience is honorable; violence is beyond the pale. But so far, thankfully, the violence has been localized and, crucially, well within the capacity of state and city officials to manage.
But don’t tell that to the Trump administration. Its language was out of control.
Stephen Miller, one of President Trump’s closest advisers and the single most important architect (aside from Trump himself) of the administration’s immigration policies, posted one word: “Insurrection.”
Vice President J.D. Vance wrote on the social platform X, “One of the main technical issues in the immigration judicial battles is whether Biden’s border crisis counted as an ‘invasion.’” That statement set the stage. He wants courts to believe we’re facing an invasion, and any disturbance will do to make his point. “So now,” Vance continued, “we have foreign nationals with no legal right to be in the country waving foreign flags and assaulting law enforcement. If only we had a good word for that …”
Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, posted his own screed on X, declaring that the Department of Defense “is mobilizing the National Guard IMMEDIATELY to support federal law enforcement in Los Angeles. And, if violence continues, active duty Marines at Camp Pendleton will also be mobilized — they are on high alert.”
Trump posted on Truth Social, “If Governor Gavin Newscum, of California, and Mayor Karen Bass, of Los Angeles, can’t do their jobs, which everyone knows they can’t, then the Federal Government will step in and solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS, the way it should be solved!!!”
That was Saturday. On Sunday evening, he wrote on Truth Social that he was “directing Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Attorney General Pam Bondi, in coordination with all other relevant Departments and Agencies, to take all such action necessary to liberate Los Angeles from the Migrant Invasion, and put an end to these Migrant riots.”
Trump called 2,000 members of the National Guard into federal service and is deploying them to Los Angeles. Neither Bass nor Newsom asked for this intervention. The state of California possesses immense resources to deal with urban unrest, and Trump barely gave it an opportunity to try.
In fact, on Sunday evening, Newsom asked Trump to rescind the deployment, calling it a “serious breach of state sovereignty.”
If you look closely, however, the Trump administration’s actions don’t quite match its alarmism. Trump deployed the National Guard, but he did not invoke the Insurrection Act, and that is a very important legal distinction.
As Steven Vladeck, a Georgetown University law professor, observed in an excellent and informative post on Substack, Trump instead ordered the Guard to Los Angeles under a different statute, which permits the president to call out the Guard when “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States.”
Under this statute, troops have the authority to “suppress the rebellion,” but they do not have the kind of sweeping law enforcement authority that soldiers would possess if the president deployed troops under the Insurrection Act.
As Vladeck noted, “Nothing that the president did Saturday night would, for instance, authorize these federalized National Guard troops to conduct their own immigration raids; make their own immigration arrests.” Instead, Trump’s order “federalizes 2,000 California National Guard troops for the sole purpose of protecting the relevant DHS personnel against attacks.”
The administration’s language was extreme. Its actions, so far, have been more limited. But that’s small comfort. The potential next step is plain to see. If the administration (in its sole discretion) believes that this first, limited deployment is insufficient, then it will escalate. It will shout “Insurrection!” and “Migrant invasion!” to justify more military control and perhaps the invocation of the Insurrection Act.
As I wrote before, the Insurrection Act’s dangerously broad language gives the president all the legal authority he needs to put tens of thousands of troops in the nation’s streets. Trump has publicly regretted not using more force to suppress disorder in 2020, and his allies have reportedly made plans for him to invoke the Insurrection Act during his second term.
It’s worth asking: Does Trump want protesters to get hurt? Recall that Mark Esper, a former Trump secretary of defense, has said that in 2020 Trump asked Gen. Mark Milley, then chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Can’t you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?” Esper took his comment as both a suggestion and a question.
We also can’t forget that this conflict is unfolding against the backdrop of a war of words between Trump and Newsom. The administration is weighing a broad cancellation of federal funds for California, and Newsom has floated withholding California tax dollars from the federal government. (Californians pay more to the federal government in taxes than the state receives in federal funding.)
It’s too early to declare a constitutional crisis, and in any case, debating the label we attach to any new event can distract us from focusing fully on the event itself. But each new day brings us fresh evidence of a deeply troubling trend: America is no longer a stable country, and it is growing less stable by the day.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times, c.2025.
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